Comradeship // Freechat

The US has internal colonization too, it doesn't just imperialize the rest of the world and then redistribute the superprofits equally to its labor aristocracy. A worker that owns no land, has no investments, and can't save for retirement is certainly no aristocrat.

But you'll notice once someone gets a house, starts investing, and starts bringing in high enough wages to save for retirement their revolutionary potential withers. They become invested in property values, market performance, and in their firm's success.

Reddit third-worldists call me evil for being born here. I’m scum for being born in this country. I know it at this point, I’m evil for benefitting from imperialism, we’re all labor aristocrats, so why bother?

It's me, I'm the third worldists. I feel like the American left still has some vestigial ideas of sin and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps that you absorbed through your lifetime. You see the concept of labor aristocracy and equate it to some sort of personal moral failure instead of a way to understand class relations under imperialism. You get told that revolutionary potential in the imperial core is low and you can't simply take control of history to conjure up revolutionary conditions out of thin air and deliver a McRevolution to your doorstep in 30 minutes or money back and think it's nihilism and defeatism and communism is impossible.

While I personally believe that a revolution in the imperial core is a long way off and that the US proletariat are labor aristocrats whose interests align with maintaining imperialism, I have never blamed you for your conditions because that would be unserious. Nor have I put up unrealistic expectations on you to scrounge up revolutionary conditions out of nowhere and destroy the Great Satan before the next warcrime festival occurs and blame you when that inevitably fails. I get really pissed at obvious displays of chauvinism but that's a normal reaction of a person with self-respect who is dehumanized by that chauvinism. And sometimes the shit American leftists, MLs even, say makes me give some credence to the Yakubian Devil memes and I fully understand why Global South leftists give up on this place to preserve their mental health.

Recognizing that it is hard or that you are objectively limited by complex factors outside of your control is not doomerism or a call to surrender. The point is to keep fighting. To bet your life on it even if you might not live to see the revolution. To understand your capabilities and not feel uncomfortable with your limits because that is how you become tempted to make mistakes. To keep learning and become a better communist so you can make more out of future opportunities. To see yourself as a citizen of the world and cheer for every victory no matter how far away because it brings us all closer to our goal. Revolution is hard. The road to communism is long and bloody and many times lonely and frustrating. If it was easier the world would be much different.

Revolution is possible, and it's the duty of those of us in the imperial core to kill imperialism from the inside. It's as simple as that. There are decent orgs in the empire, none are perfect but we can still contribute to a better world. Revolutionary optimism is a necessary mode of thought.

There’s no organizing potential in the USA at all.

So you agitate. When there are enough Class Conscious individuals in usa the party will begin to crystalize, no point in trying to force it when the conditions aren't correct.

Reddit

Reddit is a cesspit just don't go there. It is built to break you. Get off reddit. Anybody who espouses actual Marxist Leninism on reddit gets banned. The only way to be a real communist on reddit is to keep it on the DL and be very measured and careful in your wording. These accounts who proudly proclaim to be marxists on reddit are allowed to exist because they spread false consciousness.

third-worldists call me evil for being born here. I’m scum for being born in this country. I know it at this point, I’m evil for benefitting from imperialism, we’re all labor aristocrats

That is a CIA psy-op just ignore people who say that shit. The 3rd worldists on reddit are mostly petty bougies or white collar, the labor aristocrats of their own nation. They are blaming the american left for the capitalists exploiting their countries while doing nothing themselves to throw off their own bourgeoise who exploit them with neo-colonialism for their own benefit. They are every bit as useless as the americans waiting for China or Iran to save them.

I’m scum for being born in this country

No, you aren't, that's imperialist thinking pointed inward. Now if you were to go sign up for the US military and work on technology for bombing people in other countries, that would be scummy. But where you are born is something you have no control over and thus cannot possibly be your responsibility.

Reddit third-worldists call me evil for being born here.

Try not to take it personally when people do this kind of thing. Anyone actually literally saying that is misguided to begin with, but it is probably coming from a place of hatred for the empire and what it does, rather than a preoccupied hatred of every single individual living in the regions it controls.

we’re all labor aristocrats

I think that is an oversimplified analysis. Is a homeless person a labor aristocrat just because they're homeless in the US? I don't think so. The labor aristocracy analysis can be useful for tracking the connection between imperial spoils and imperial worker seeing some benefits from it, and how that changes the way they think about class struggle and international solidarity. But it loses precision of meaning if it is applied as a blanket categorization to everyone living in the imperial core, which defeats the point of it being a tool for being more precise in doing class/caste analysis.

everyone here only thinks voting is the way out.

Not everyone, but certainly there is a lot of it. This is likely to keep shifting as people do what they can to educate and as conditions worsen, with the electoral system providing no real relief.

Defeatism is reactionary, comrade. If we believe our struggles don't matter they will never be resolved. If we believe we cannot win we will never try. No matter how hopeless everything may seem we have to believe that we can win because we objectively can. We are the majority. We are the cogs that keep the machine running and we can grind it to a halt if we so choose. We can do this and if pushed far enough we will do this.

The rise of social democracy shouldn't be seen as defeat; the failures of social democrat will drive further radicalizing. It already has. I was a social democrat myself once, as were many other comrades. Even Americans have their breaking point and we're on a fast track to it because social democrats can't beat fascists. Tides are turning if it doesn't seem like it.

Ignore Third Worldists. Workers everywhere are oppressed and we all deserve liberation. No one deserves to die on the streets. No one deserves to starve. That is the enemy's language.

We're still in Gramsci's Time of Monsters, but time moves forward. Always. And so must we.

Gotta kill the ~~cop~~ god in your head, comrade

Evil is a social construct and there's no such thing as absolution in death.

Guilt and shame are immaterial.

There's obviously more to it than just turning off or invalidating emotions, but understand that how you internalize and process information doesn't impact the world, doesn't lessen anyone's suffering. As such feeling shame and self-pity is materially worse for the victims of imperialism and capitalism (including yourself, to whatever degree) than doing any action to build revolution.

So like, feel what you're going to feel as a human, but exercise what influence you can over how those natural reactions translate into second-order thoughts and analysis.

First, divorce Marxist analysis from moralism. Marx didn't write Capital to describe the ways in which the bourgeoisie are evil and proletariat are good. The working class isn't good. Class is an abstract category we construct to understand and interact with material interests, not to assign individuals to heaven or hell.

Then internalize dialectical thinking. Ban yourself from static thoughts.

There's no organizing potential in the US at all

I won't address how this is patently false and likely influenced by capitalist-mediated algorithmic representations of reality from social media. It's a static thought, implies the existence of some essence of US that was, is, and always will be. But everything exists in relation to other things and everything is always growing and changing based on its internal and external contradictions.

You don't look at a sapling and tell one of its molecules: gah! This is barely a tree! There's no wood for building or fruit for eating or leaves for shade! Why even try? You've opened a biology textbook to the sapling page and fixated on a single paragraph. Or to stretch this metaphor past its limits, the textbook is written by the tree-hating bourgeoisie, who have conveniently omitted the ludicrous idea that any plant could grow larger than a sapling.

Static thinking sees binaries, dialectical thinking sees waxing and waning influences and tensions. Static thinking sees mixed material interests and reduces them to no revolutionary potential. Dialectical thinking examines the conflicting interests of imperial spoils versus proletarian exploitation, the former a reactionary tension on imperial-core workers and the latter a revolutionary tension. It analyzes the degrees and trajectories of each tension, sees waning imperial influences and waxing proletarianization, and predicts a reemergence of revolutionary potential in the imperial core.

I know what your feeling. I know what it's like to know that the negative self talk you give to yourself is idealist and undialectical, only for that recognition to become more ammunition for the voice.

I fear that some of the advice given by comrades here, for as good as it is, will be twisted by that voice and empower it even more. "Defeatism and nihilism are reactionary notions that the ruling class uses to paralyze you and prevent you from resisting" becomes "I'm an ontologically evil defeatist nihilist reactionary and should just kill myself so I don't drag down the movement". You may read the comrades' advice, realize that they are emphatically telling you there is nothing inherently wrong with you and that their coarseness is to get through to you, and turn that into even more ammunition against yourself for why you're a bad communist and should end it all.

Recognizing that this way of thinking is ingrained in us from a young age to demobilize us is an important step. There are feds in our brains -- ones who can even hijack your sense of self -- and they are trying to kill us. One of the luxuries we first worlders get is the latest and greatest tricknology to use for our own personal MK Ultras.

I don't know what comes after the recognition step. I haven't gone past that myself. Joining an org and seeking community are of course important, but how to take those steps when even the mildest attempts send me onto the brink of a mental breakdown? I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm in this with you. Please don't kill yourself. I need you. We need you.

if we all kill ourselves then what will be the point of the movement? nowadays, the CIA and other anti communist organizations know they dont need to go full mass surveillance or go after every single one of us because they know that people self censor due to fear of humiliation and death.

second off, youre not evil for anything. theres this stupid thing americans do to each other where they insist they are worse than hitler over drinking a pepsi. this is useless. i think that you have to create your own sense of reality here and affirm it. if a frustrated third worlder says that all americans have to die you dont take that as an invitation to kill yourself. you realize that 1. they dont mean it literally 2. they are verbalizing their own frustrations 3. socialists exist in every part of the imperial core, youre not evil for being born there.

Don't give up yet. I've searched for the past 17 years to find people who're pissed off about certain issues and I'm still struggling to find people in 2026. Things have changed though, I'm sure of it. Most of Gen Z understand that the current system is broken. Just keep chipping away at the political system until it dies.

There’s no organizing potential in the USA at all

three years ago nobody thought that hating zionism would be as mainstream as now, or someone like luigi being considered some kind of hero even if there's some adventurism around him

Everyone only thinks social democrats are the most radical option

who are everyone? people in the internet?

Reddit third-worldists call me evil for being born here

you should ignore the hivemind filled with FBI bots for you own good

I’m evil for benefitting from imperialism

you should stop being so hard on yourself, nobody is inmune to propaganda

I’m just so tired of everything

that's what they reactionaries want

Reddit third-worldists call me evil for being born here. I’m scum for being born in this country. I know it at this point, I’m evil for benefitting from imperialism, we’re all labor aristocrats, so why bother?

I don't think you are called evil by third worldists but your class interests don't align with the working class from the third world. You do benefit somewhat from US imperialism.

Now that your rights and standards of living are being eroded, it should be motivation to organise against some of that erosion.

Don't kill yourself, agitate. As a wise man once said, "Laugh, love, fuck and drink liquor. And help the damn revolution come quicker."

You're already on the right track, and the world needs more people pushing for progress, not fewer.

Listen to better music & make plans to move 👍 you've got years

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12144063

I have Avoidant Personality Disorder (AvPD), which causes self-hatred, depression, all that fun stuff, with no friends, no political social network, and have gotten scammed out of thousands because I thought for a second someone was actually liked me, and am stuck in a rural area. People can talk about revolutionary optimism all they want, but that doesn’t help.